The Book Of Secrets Part 52

'That is why we must protect it.' He slipped the book into a leather bag and knotted it shut. 'We will root out this evil and destroy it utterly. We will find the man who did it and erase his name from the pages of history. I will do my best to protect you as you see, I have some influence and you will never speak of it to anyone.'

It was the only time I ever heard him sound so serious a glimpse of the inner strength that had carried him so high.

'As for you, I think you deserve better than you have had from your friends. I will see what I can do.' He reached onto a side table and pressed a book in my hands. For a second I thought it was Kaspar's; I shuddered to touch it. Then I realised it was my bestiary, still with the card pasted into the back. The two books were easily confused.

'The inquisitor had it. I return it to you. Presently, I will try to restore more of your fortunes.'

He gave a thin smile. 'Though you will find the Church is not your only enemy.'

Nick looked into the faces opposite him: two of the last men he'd ever expected to be rescued by. Atheldene, incongruous in a wool coat; beside him, in a blue parka and an NYPD baseball cap, a face Nick thought he'd left behind for good in New York.

'Detective Royce?'

He might as well have been miming: the noise in the cabin meant he could barely hear himself. One of the crew pa.s.sed him a headset.

'Have you come to arrest me?'

Royce shook his head and pointed to the back of the cabin. 'Your girlfriend.'

'Gillian? She-'

'She's a thief.'

Nick couldn't believe it. 'You're going to prosecute her for taking the card from Paris? After all this?'

'It's not the card. Simon here's been tracking her for months.'

Nick glanced at Atheldene. He didn't look the part. 'You're a cop?'

'I'm an auctioneer. But I've got friends in the Art Squad at Scotland Yard. Sometimes I do them the odd favour. A few months ago they asked me to keep an eye on Gillian. Things had been going missing from the Cloisters in New York and turning up for sale in London, but the museum could never prove anything. In the end they wrote her a first-cla.s.s reference and packed her off to Stevens Mathison. Soon afterwards it started happening to us.'

Nick jerked his thumb at Royce. 'Was he involved?'

'Only when you showed up in Paris.' Royce flashed him a grin: it looked less unpleasant than it had in the interrogation room. 'Simon called London, who of course had the heads-up on you from Interpol. They called me. I got that special feeling I get sometimes. Instead of booking you for murder and obstruction of justice, I figured we might get something interesting by following you.'

'And Atheldene? Almost getting killed in Brussels? Was that part of the plan?'

Atheldene played with the b.u.t.ton on his coat. 'That was genuine. I was terrified. I usually get called in to tell the Art Squad when someone's selling something they're not supposed to own, or to see if the object in an insurance claim is genuine. I'm not used to this sort of thing.'

The helicopter banked around the mountain. The clouds had parted and a cold moon appeared.

'What's that?' Atheldene pointed to the hillside below. A fire burned among the trees, a golden bead in the silver forest.

The pilot's voice, German accented, came over the headsets. 'Maybe a car crash? I call Oberwinter to send the police.'

'Can they send a fire engine too?' Atheldene craned around so that he could see the castle. The roof must have collapsed: the flames now rose unhindered out of the sh.e.l.l of the tower.

'On that road, it is not possible. Maybe in the morning.'

'The Devils' Library,' Atheldene murmured. 'Imagine even half an hour in that place.'

'I'd have swapped with you,' Nick muttered. 'You wouldn't have liked the librarian.'

'Point taken. But it is a shame about all those books.'

Emily reached inside her s.h.i.+rt and pulled out a battered brown-leather-bound book.

'Not all of them.'

Atheldene almost lunged for it across the cabin, then remembered his manners. 'Is that the one . . . ?'

'No. It was chained to the wall I couldn't. But I managed to grab this. Anyway, I prefer it.' She pa.s.sed it to Nick. 'It's for you.'

Nick shook his head. In the back, he could see Gillian breathing fitfully as she slept under a blanket.

'I got what I came for.'

COLOPHON.

What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops.

It was strange to be back in the Humbrechthof. The clatter of the presses; types clicking together in their sticks; the shouts and banter of the apprentices calling across the yard for more paper, more ink, more beer. But it was no longer mine. The purpose that animated the house had changed: practical, routine, no longer charged with the excitement of discovery. Kaspar and I, Gotz and Keffer and the others, we had charted a new country. Now a second generation had arrived to lay down roads and barns, drain marshes, plant crops, tame the wilderness. Many of the faces I saw were new: they glanced at me as I pa.s.sed, but only idly. A few recognised me, and looked away or shook my hand as their consciences allowed. Peter Schoeffer was not among them.

'He went to Frankfurt,' said Fust, when he received me in his room. 'He has some business there with a bookseller. He should have returned by now. He will be sorry to have missed you. No doubt some woman delayed him.'

I let the lie stand, and wondered if Fust knew that Schoeffer was sleeping with his daughter. Fust misread my expression.

'He thought the world of you. As an artist, as an inventor. Nothing pained him more than having to choose between us. He is my heir, but yours also.'

He picked up a small block of engraved metal from his desk and gave it to me. It came apart in my hands: I began to apologise, then realised it was meant to. One part, the smaller, was a bulbous letter B, intricately carved so that within the strokes of the letter itself flowers grew, branches blossomed and a hound chased a duck over a meadow. It fitted into a slot in the second piece of metal, engraved with a lush border of foliage, to make a seamless whole.

'Peter's invention. You ink the inner part red and the outer blue, then drop it in among the black-inked forms and print the initials. We are using it on a psalter for the cathedral.' He showed it to me imprinted on a piece of paper, sharper than any illuminator or rubricator could produce.

'Beautiful,' I admitted. Perhaps I had been wrong. Perhaps there were still discoveries to be made in this house.

'It is still too slow. Peter is like you that way, obsessed with quality and no thought to cost.'

An awkward silence hung between us. Fust escaped it by shuffling papers on his desk until he found the one he sought.

'I suppose we should finish our business.' He gave me the doc.u.ment to sign and seal. 'I am sorry this is necessary. The psalter is late; the Church is slow to pay, so I must borrow more money. The Jew had heard about our disagreement and demanded an a.s.surance that you accepted all the terms of the court's judgment. It is only a formality.' He lit a candle and reached for the sealing wax.

'You will forgive me if I am cautious about anything you give me to sign.'

'Of course.' A sharp-toothed smile. I could not wound him so easily.

I read it through. Fust took the contents of the Humbrechthof, the presses and types, the ink and paper, the furniture, down to the last composing stick. He also kept the finished Bibles to sell at his own profit. The Gutenberghof, its press and everything in it remained mine. There was a time when I had burned with the injustice of it; now my anger had cooled. It was past.

I signed my name at the bottom and pressed my seal into the soft wax. Punch and form. Fust did the same.

'You have a new seal,' I noticed. A black bird with a yoke around its neck, supporting two black s.h.i.+elds blazoned with letters and stars.

'The Fust and Schoeffer Book Works. Peter designed it. We will stamp it in all our works, a hallmark of our quality. Customers will demand nothing less.'

I did not like it. In its way, it seemed a greater blasphemy than anything Kaspar ever did. To put your mark on a piece of art, to claim it for your own, was to appropriate it from G.o.d.

Again, Fust misinterpreted my frown. 'I am sorry,' he repeated. He wanted me to believe it. 'The street between our houses is not so very long. No doubt we will see each other. I hope we can be friends.'

I was old enough that it barely hurt to lie. 'I hope so. But not now. I am leaving Mainz for a time.'

There was no missing his relief. 'Where will you go?'

'I have an errand in Stra.s.sburg.'

April suns.h.i.+ne bathed the city. The half-timbered houses and Gothic turrets shone with a warm light; bright colours festooned the square where racks of tea towels, postcards and guidebooks had sprung up like spring flowers. Crowds of tourists milled about, enjoying the Easter holiday, while kings and angels, lions, knights and serpents watched from the stone above.

No one paid any attention to the young couple who walked hand in hand across the square. They entered the cathedral by the west door, under the monumental facade, into the deep twilight that kept perpetual hold on the interior. To their left, on the north wall, a row of stained-gla.s.s kings glowed vivid with the light behind them. Nick's pulse quickened; he squeezed Emily's hand.

Atheldene was waiting for them about halfway along the nave, just before a side chapel interrupted the procession of kings. A fluorescent vest was draped awkwardly over his suit, and a hard hat perched on his head. At the base of the pillar behind him, a stone mason in overalls stood in a hydraulic scissor lift.

'I hope you're right about this. You can't imagine the paperwork involved in pulling apart one of the masterpieces of Gothic architecture. Especially when the people who want to do it are all personae non gratae with the Church hierarchy. I've had to call in a career's worth of favours and tell the most outrageous fibs.'

Nick took the bestiary out of his bag. The corner of the battered card poked from behind the last page. He tucked it back in. Soon he'd have to surrender both the card to rejoin the deck at the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, the book to the British Library in London. It had all been discreetly arranged courtesy of Stevens Mathison. Nick, who had never owned any book older than a Superman #61 Issue, would be sad to let them go.

But the bestiary had one last secret to give up. He opened it to the restored front page, cut out by Gillian but now expertly sewn back in. In the bottom corner was the sketch of the square building standing in the arms of a cross which they'd noticed on the boat to Oberwinter.

It was Emily who had finally deciphered it.

'It's not a building with a cross,' she'd said, one evening back in New York. 'It's a building at a crossroads.'

Nick hadn't been impressed. 'That narrows it down.'

'It does if you know anything about Gutenberg's life.' An exas perated sigh. 'Strasbourg the city of roads. The crossroads of Europe.'

'And that building . . .'

'The cathedral.'

It was a doodle it could have been any building with an arched door. It didn't even have much of a tower.

'It all fits. The crossroads. The kings on the walls and the Sayings of the Kings of Israel. Gutenberg.'

And so they had come back, to the church at the crossroads where two dozen kings of uncertain realms stood entombed in gla.s.s.

'Mana.s.ses was the sixteenth King of Israel.' Emily counted off the kings in the windows, four at a time, until she came to the window opposite where they were standing. 'Louis the Pious.'

'Seems appropriate.'

'Gillian's going to be kicking herself if we're right,' said Atheldene.

Nick went quiet. He'd crossed Europe to find Gillian and, unbelievably, he'd rescued her. He still wasn't sure what he'd found. He no longer lay awake at night wondering what might have been. He no longer wanted her to hold him and whisper she was sorry for everything, begging him for a second chance. But some questions couldn't be answered. She would always be the wild woman, untamed and unknowable, dancing in the margins.

Nick and Emily put on yellow vests and hard hats. The lift carried them up the side of the column, high over the heads of the tourists below. One or two looked up, but the sight of reflective clothing seemed to rea.s.sure them that nothing interesting was happening. High-visibility camouflage.

'How could Gutenberg ever have gotten up here?' Nick wondered.

'They were still building and rebuilding the cathedral when he was here. There was probably some scaffolding around the pillars.'

The lift eased to a stop. They were almost at head height with the kings now, face to face with the carvings on the pillar. A man's head pus.h.i.+ng through thick foliage. An eagle with a snake in its beak. And . . .

'The digging bear.' Nick had known it would be there: Atheldene had spotted it from the ground and sent a photograph. Even so, he felt a s.h.i.+ver of unexpected awe. This close, he could see how similar it was to the animal on the card. A little squashed, maybe, to fit the s.p.a.ce on the pillar: a flatter back, a sharper bend in its knee that made it more purposeful. In the bottom corner, a small hole had been bored in the stone beside its burrowing snout.

Bear is the key.

The mason took out a thin metal hook like a dentist's pick. 'If I find any cement, we stop,' he warned.

But there was no mortar holding it in place only generations of acc.u.mulated grime and soot packed into a treacly black muck. The mason worked it free with his tool. It left a thin crack outlining the stone.

'Squeaky-b.u.m time,' said Atheldene. He took the bear by its snout and inched it towards him. It came smoothly, almost eagerly. He and the mason lifted it down onto the floor of the lift. A rectangular hole yawned in the pillar.

'There's something in there.'

Emily reached in. Her hands came out holding a rusted metal box, about the size of a biscuit tin. Big enough to hold a book. Hands trembling, Atheldene inserted a blade into the lid and prised it open. All three of them craned to look in.

'It's . . . disintegrated.'

The box contained nothing but a deep layer of sc.r.a.ps, like soap flakes or autumn leaves gathered up for the bonfire. Most bore traces of writing; some flashed gold or red where fragments of illuminations caught light from the stained-gla.s.s windows. None was more than an inch across.

'Water vapour must have got in. If the parchment had been exposed to sunlight at any point previously, moisture would have broken it apart.'

Emily pulled on a latex glove and picked up one of the fragments. Even now, the ink was black and glossy.

'This is the right typeface for the Liber Bonasi.'

'Some of it's different.' Atheldene pointed to another fragment where the words were in brown ink. Even Nick could see it was handwritten, not printed.

'. . . many names . . . goose meat . . .' Atheldene let it fall back in the box. 'I don't know what this is.'

Emily sifted quickly through a few more of the pieces. 'It looks as if there were two books in here. The Liber Bonasi and a much longer ma.n.u.script. They're all mixed up.'

Nick stared into the box. He couldn't begin to count how many fragments there must be. Thousands? Millions? Some had probably disintegrated completely; others might be illegible. But he had time.

He smiled at Emily. 'We can piece it together.'

I stepped into the Gutenberghof for the last time, glancing as always at the pilgrim on the lintel. I resembled him more after my ordeal with the inquisitor. My back stooped, my neck drooped. On cold days even breathing was painful. But the load I had carried hidden under my cloak so long was almost done.

The others were waiting for me upstairs. Sas.p.a.ch and Gotz, Gunther, Keffer and Ruppel and half a dozen others, men whose names have not figured in my chronicle, though I saw them almost daily as we worked the press. Mentelin the scribe, who had begun work on a new set of types since Fust took mine; Numeister, Sweynheym, Sensenschmidt and Ulrich Han. Only Kaspar was absent. In the middle, towering above them all, stood the press. Like all of us, it had aged: stained with ink, dented from all the times we had needed to hammer out jams, its screw no longer quite straight but still capable of sixteen pages an hour in the hands of good men.